Google Custom Search

There is yet another new tool from Google that has great potential for use in k-12 classrooms. It's called the Google Custom Search Engine and it allows you to define the individual pages you want included when your students conduct a keyword search. You can include as many or as few sites in your custom search engine as you want. The nice thing about this is that you can provide students with the experience of searching online for information knowing that they are only going to be searching through the sites you have specified. That way, they get the practice of conducting keyword searches without having to weed through 3 million sites that are returned in their searches. One thing to remember is that this is not a filter system in that it won't keep students from clicking away from a site in your approved list once they navigate to it. You can create multiple custom search engines or just have one and you can embed the search engines in your blog or webpage as a way to make it available to students.